-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- London Times 2/20/00: THE secrets of how MI5 spied on John Lennon are to be revealed after a ruling by a Los <!-- --> <A Angeles federal court cleared the way for the release of British intelligence reports held TARGET="_new"><IMG by the FBI, write John Harlow and Nicholas Rufford. The 10 packages of documents, which are held at Washington's FBI headquarters, are Next: Secret Barclays report reveals how banks rip off customers believed to expose how Lennon gave money to the Irish Republican Army before its split between the Official and Provisional wings. They also show that he paid �46,000 to left-wing groups including the Trotskyist Workers' Revolutionary party (WRP) and Red Mole, a Marxist magazine edited by Tariq Ali, the student protest leader. Some of the information came from an MI5 "deep throat" inside the WRP who passed on details of Lennon's donations to the Americans and, bizarrely, a handwritten transcript of the lyrics to Lennon's song Working Class Hero, which he is thought to have sent to the WRP as a gift. The WRP achieved fame through its leading lights, the actors Vanessa and Corin Redgrave, but the movement has since fallen apart as a result of of internal rows. MI5 passed material from its own files to the FBI in the early 1970s after Lennon moved to America and began campaigning against the Vietnam war. Advisers to Richard Nixon, the former American president, ordered J Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, to find information to help deport Lennon. Following receipt of the MI5 intelligence, the FBI stepped up its surveillance of the singer. Lennon and Yoko Ono, his wife, were followed to Irish bars in New York that were fundraising for the IRA. The FBI even transcribed the lyrics of songs that Lennon performed at demonstrations. It is thought that Lennon's attraction to the republican cause dated back to his Liverpudlian roots, where he was surrounded by Irish expatriates. In 1971, when internment without trial was introduced in Northern Ireland, he held a sign at a London rally that read "Victory for the IRA against British imperialism". After the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings, he proclaimed: "If it's a choice between the IRA and the British Army, I'm with the IRA." The FBI and CIA have released hundreds of pages of highly censored versions of documents relating to their own investigations but they have refused to make public papers passed to them by MI5 without permission from Britain. MI5 held back some information from the FBI, fearing - correctly - that it would eventually become public. Yesterday's court ruling makes it difficult for the American government to resist a further request for the release of the British files. The decision follows a 20-year campaign by Jon Wiener, a history professor at the University of California and author of a new book about the Lennon files, Gimme Some Truth. Wiener first applied for the files to be released only a few weeks after Lennon was murdered in New York in December 1980. "I find it disappointing that Tony Blair's government, with its commitment to freedom of information, continues to block 30-year-old information about a dead rock star," Wiener said. Rupert Allason, the former Conservative MP and espionage historian, said yesterday that he was not surprised by the reluctance of the British government to release such documents. "Tony Blair is as trapped by institutional secrecy as his predecessors," he said. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
